A HEU gun-type bomb is much more idiot-proof than a plutonium implosion device; if they test I bet this one is pretty successful with a 15-20 kt yield, similar to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs.
Even then, you can’t just use pure uranium if you want to get a good explosion rather than a hot meltdown. It has to be spiced up with other stuff to perk up the rate at which the newly created critical mass undergoes reaction. Norkie quality control stinks, to put it mildly. The other stuff is going to be the problem here. IMHO.
Shall we assume Iranians will be present for the test - with cash in hand?
Gun-type devices are pretty much fool proof. Not much need to test anything and a serious waste of expensive resources unless the Uranium is not weapons grade.
It takes a lot of technology to get an implosion-type device to work. My bet is they are testing one of those. Heck, we never tested our gun-type weapon. Hiroshima was the test. The very first nuclear detonation was an implosion device. We really needed to know if our design and technology was ready. The group at Los Alamos were quite confident Little Boy would work and decided to not test it and wast all that expensive weapons grade Oralloy.
A HEU gun-type bomb is much more idiot-proof than a plutonium implosion device; if they test I bet this one is pretty successful with a 15-20 kt yield, similar to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs.”
You don’t even NEED to test a device with such a reliable design! We didn’t, in WWII - we just unloaded it on Nagasaki. The one we TESTED at Los Alamos was the plutonium implosion design.
HEU bombs can also be implosion-stye weapons.